Chapter 24 #3
The apartment felt worse afterwards. I stood there for several minutes, listening to the rain and the faint hum of the elevator descending through the building.
On the table, her glass of water remained untouched.
Her chair sat angled slightly away from the table, one leg half an inch from where it belonged.
Her presence had altered the room so briefly and so completely that the absence of it became offensive.
She was right. I wanted her to be dependent on me.
I wanted to be the door she ran toward when everything else closed.
I wanted her safe, but only if safety had my name on it.
I wanted her affection freely given, and yet kept arranging the world so freedom had fewer options. It was crude. And still, there it was.
I walked to the sideboard and poured a drink I did not want. I did not taste it while I took sips to calm my nerves.
Céline would not come because I demanded it.
She would not stay because I offered her a room, not even if I sweetened the offer with privacy, work, or that ridiculous cat.
She had built herself too carefully to accept a cage simply because I lined it in velvet.
No. If she came here, she would need to believe the choice belonged to her.
She would need to arrive furious, frightened and proud, carrying conditions in both hands.
Her room. Her cat. Her right to leave. Her insistence that this was temporary.
Her belief that she had negotiated the terms. She would need to choose me under pressure without seeing my hand on it.
I set the glass down and went to the locked drawer in my study.
The file sat beneath a stack of correspondence from the university board, plain manila, unmarked except for the date my investigator had delivered it.
I had not intended to use it so soon. At first, it had been a precaution.
Céline Martin had built herself from omissions, and I did not like being the man in any room who knew less than someone else.
The investigator had done great work. Birth records.
Old addresses. Police calls from years ago.
Employment records. Debt filings. A photograph taken outside a liquor store in Portland, the man in it older than he should have looked, face softened by alcohol and resentment, still carrying enough of Selena in the bones around his eyes to make the resemblance unpleasant.
Daniel Martin. Her father.
I had looked at the photograph once when the file arrived, then put it away.
Now I took it out and studied it properly.
He was not impressive at all, which irritated me.
Monsters should at least have the decency to look worthy of the fear they created.
Daniel Martin looked ordinary. Poorly shaved.
Heavy around the mouth. The sort of man who probably smelled of cigarettes and old beer, who believed the world had cheated him.
And yet this was the man who had helped make Selena Martin fluent in fear before she was old enough to name it.
I turned the page. The investigator’s notes were neat.
Current location uncertain but likely within Maine.
Occasional sightings in Portland and Bangor.
Known to contact former acquaintances for money.
History of unstable employment. Alcohol dependency suspected.
No active restraining order found. Possible awareness of ex-wife and daughter’s relocation unknown.
Possible awareness.
That could change.
I sat at my desk with the file open beneath the lamp. For the first time that night, the restlessness quieted.
If Daniel Martin found her, Céline would panic.
She would try to manage it herself first because that was what she did.
She would hide it from Sophia and Anya for as long as possible.
She would not tell her mother unless forced, because her mother had already survived him once.
She would assess every hallway, every locked door, every walk back from campus in the rain.
She would need safety. And after Thad, after the file, after the proposal, after everything I had broken and stripped from her, she would understand exactly what I could provide.
Security. Silence. Money. Rooms with locks no one else could open. A man more dangerous than the one she feared. She would come to me. I would make myself the only logical answer.
My phone sat beside the file. For a long moment, I did not touch it.
There were lines even I recognized. That was perhaps the funniest part.
I knew exactly what I was about to do. I knew the cruelty of it, the arrogance, the vulgarity of using an old terror to create a new dependence.
I knew she would hate me if she discovered it.
No. When she discovered it. Céline was too intelligent not to find out eventually. But later was not now. And when later came, I would deal with the consequences.
I picked up the phone and called the number my investigator had marked as most likely to reach him. It rang five times. Six. Then a rough male voice answered, suspicious and already irritated.
“Who’s this?”
I looked at Daniel Martin’s photograph beneath the lamplight.
Then I smiled.
“Mr. Martin,” I said. “I believe we should talk about your daughter.”